You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!

Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.

If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.

Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.

Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

I was very impressed by this distribution. It doesn't have a fancy control center like Mandrake or SUSE, but what it does have is wonderfully simple and works equally well.

Multimedia is very well supported, and Debian compatibility is good. The desktop is standard KDE, and the general application offering tends toward programs specifically written for KDE (K*), though that is not all that the cd includes.

Also, for those who aren't as inclined to look under the hood, it comes with the Clam antivirus scanner and the Spamassassin spam filter, both integrated into the Kmail email client.

Does everything I need right out of the box, which is rare. And all in an amazingly simple package.

After making the switch to Mepis I began wondering why it took the other distributions so much work to get as good as they are when Mepis seems to reach their level so simply and easily.

I don't know whether the negative aspect mentioned is worth it....cuz the problem is only on "my computer"
This problem gave it a 9.....otherwise it would have been 10

The combination of live cd and integrated installer was just fascinating.

I just could view how it works through the live cd, and when i liked it a lot, i installed it within no time.

The KdE desktop environment looked great.
One thing that i like most that hardware detection was so superb.
Moreover, it automatically detected all of my NTFS drives without the need to mount them manually.

So, the Mepis 3.3 CD can be used as a good backup tool.

The Mepis created me problems running my network as the system used to freeze to -10000 degree celcius.....and could only come to the normal temperature, when i used to press the panic button!

Other things were just so great....

As this distro is based on Debian, the more famous rpm packages cannot be installed...

But that need not matter, as Mepis 3.3 supports 10000 other packages which can be downloaded from the internet.

I would recommend this for newbies....who wanna try LInux for the first time.

I already used SimplyMepis 2004, and liked it very much. When I learned that SimplyMepis 3.3 had been released, with improvements, I was interested in trying it out.
I ordered the CD direct from www.mepis.com, and it arrived in just a few days. I popped it in the computer, and the live CD loaded in a few minutes. Last years version, SimplyMepis 2004 was installed on my master hard drive, hda. I chose to install version 3.3 on the slave drive, hdb. From the time I clicked the "Install" icon until finish took 16 minutes. I had to answer a couple of questions regarding where to install passwords, where to install grub, etc. Truthfully, no more difficult than installing Windows 98.
The new version is an evolutionary improvement over last years version. KDE is a little slicker than before, with different icons. I noticed that my obscure digital camera (an Argus DC 1500) is correctly detected and recognized by the new system, while last years system did not recognize it.
Mozilla Firefox is now the default browser, while last year was "normal" Mozilla for both browsing and email. The new default email client is Kmail. I tried it for a while, then downloaded Mozilla Thunderbird for email.
Package management is something which really works well. I've used Kpackage and Synaptic, and both work really smoothly. Just open the program, and check for updated packages. It will generate a list of what is already installed on your machine, and what is available to add or upgrade. When I added Thunderbird, Synaptic contacted the Debian repositories, resolved all dependancies and downloaded all the necessary programs, then installed them on the system while I watched. (Thunderbird is a large download, about 12 MB, so took about an hour over my dialup connection. If you have a cable connection, it should go much faster). My ISP dropped the connection about halfway through the download, and I thought I might have to begin all over again. But no, after I reestablished the connection, Synaptic picked up exactly where it had stopped and continued as if nothing had happened. The installed Thunderbird worked perfectly.

The first time I tried to watch a DVD movie, the player Xine informed me that I needed to download and install some libraries which contained instructions on decoding the DVD encryption. Xine told me the exact name of the libraries needed, I opened Synaptic and it found and installed them for me. This took about five minutes, again over my dialup connection.

SimplyMepis 3.3 comes with Win4Lin, which allows you to run Windows 98 as a program from within Mepis, and therefore (in theory) any application or game which requires Windows 98. Also included is XMMS, a nice media player which encodes music to MP3 or OGG format. I have approximately 6 GB of music on my hard drive which I listen to while at the keyboard. Other applications of interest include Open Office, a nice suite of word processor, spreadsheet, drawing tools etc. Kooka is a program for manipulating digital images, K3B is a CD burning utility which works very well. There is even Kweather, which shows atmospheric conditions in the lower right corner of the screen.
I am very pleased with SimplyMepis. The only issue I have had was a minor one with the bootloader, grub. I had to get online and read some posts on how to edit a file located at /boot/grub/menu.1st so that I could still boot the older version of SimplyMepis located on the other hard drive. This might be a concern for someone who wants to dualboot, say, Windows and SimplyMepis. However, I should repeat, it was easily resolved.
I've experimented with various alternative OS since the announcement of Windows XP, starting with SuSE 7.1, then Caldera OpenLinux 2.2, then BeOS 5, and finally, SimplyMepis. I am extremely pleased with SimplyMepis, and offer a big "thumbs up" to Warren and his team in West Virginina.

Mepis is a great choice for the Linux newbie. Installation on the hard drive is very fast and easy. Still, a new Linux user might have difficulty setting up a dial-up hardware modem. Mepis comes with most every application that a computer user would need.

Still, Mepis is a one man operation. Thus, I wonder what would happen to this distrobution if the one man died or changed jobs.

MEPIS 3.3 does a wonderful job of balancing ease of use, with the full flexibility of debian. I also use Linspire 5.0, which is virtually flawless but also costs $50 per year. MEPIS 3.3, in my view, is almost as easy to use, and no one is obliged to pay for it (although I believe it deserves everyone's support at some level). I tried Ubuntu 5.04, which would not install without a lot of work on my part, PCLinux .81, which has great potential, but again I had to do some manual manipulation. The installer for Fedora Core 3 would not work. Mandrake needed labor to get it into a satisfactory usable state. None of that was required with MEPIS. In my opinion, this is absolutely the best value distro currently available.

Forget about ever descending into dependency
HELL again. Synaptic installs and updates
programs with intoxicating ease. Installation from live cd is a breeze . I've tried all the major distros
and none of them come close to MEPIS. This guy
deserves a nobel prize for this accomplishment.

I had a lot of problems with FC3 trying to share my internet connection thru a hub to my WinXP machine. I tried MEPIS because of all the good things I'd heard on LQ, and other sites, and in 30mins I had a fully functional network with ICS. My soundcard is the only hardware that I haven't gotten to work, but that's it. I'm a MEPIS convert.

This is by far the best Linux distribution. It comes with more out the box than all the others (Ubuntu, Fedora, and Mandrake) I've tried. With 1 CD you can test it out live, and while in live mode you can install it! I was surfing the internet while it was installing! It comes with java, flash, mpeg support, mplayer, Azureus, Real Player 10, nice games, nvidia card support, and Acrobat Reader! Installing other programs with apt-get is an ease. And because it's .deb based, you have more available to choose from than you would have in a .rpm based distro. My only complaint is that adding users is a little tricky. Aside from that, Mepis is great!

I have been using linux for about 3 years now. I started with Fedora Core 1, then switched to Mandrake. I have also tried Slackware, Fedora Cores 3 & 4, and Gentoo. Though Mandrake (now Mandriva) was a good distro for newbies, I eventually began to realize how truly bloated it was and began searching for something else. After a lot of searching, and just when I was about to give up on linux, I finally found Simply Mepis 3.3.1. I have no doubt now that this is the best linux distribution by far. It might not be the MOST user friendly, but even a linux novice would be able to figure out how to set things up with a little bit of searching on google. For the intermediate user such as myself, MEPIS is a dream come true. It works perfectly with all of my hardware, is rock-solid, and has TONS of available software. It also runs faster on my Athlon XP 2600+ than any other distro has. The only improvement I could suggest for this distribution is to make the MEPIS Control Center more powerful, like Mandriva's OS Control Center. Other than that, an 11/10. Try it now!

I was working with Mandriva on my Acer Aspire 3002, I had everything working except my Wireless Nic (Broadcom 4318). I was checking out the forums on this page and found out about Mepis. I downloaded Simply Mepis 3.3. After a couple tried I got the wifi working on my laptop, but not LAN. Also I could not get the resolution of my screen to 1200 * 800, best I could get was 1024 * 768.

I also tried this in my server system - found everything - I wil be using it on my server soon (Server is a file server for home use). I have taken Mepis off the laptop and am currently downloading the new Debian release. I feel with the full version of Debian - I may have more success with my laptop.

Mepis is a great starter system, and I am tempted to put it on al the computers at home for its functionality. Just not my laptop.

I honestly believe that if most poeple started their computer experiances with a simple linux distrobution like Mepis, a lot of people would have never touched windowz.

Has EVERYTHING you need right out the box, Easiest installer I've seen.

Cons:

Slow moving on latest software, still lagging with KDE-3.3.x

I would have given this distro a perfect 10 if not for the outdated KDE packages and the fact that upgrades are practically frozen until Debian SID gets back in order. However that problem is supposed to go away in a couple of weeks. Let me say that I ran Mepis on faulty hardware for months and was productive up until just before the hardware crapped out completly. Not knowing I had faulty hardware left a sour taste in my mouth initially. I used to use Fedora core 3 until I got tired of RPM hell and switched over. I couldn't have picked a better distro to switch to. Compared to all other distros nothing I've seen, (not even the SUSE 9.3 DVD) had all the right apps. This meant a great deal after spending a month downloading and installing FC3 rpms just to be able to play my wma's and VPN tunnel to a remote site. The live CD doubles as an install disk, triples as a rescue disk, quadruples as a... whatever else you can dream of.

It comes prepacked with KDE 3.3.x as the defualt display manager and you can install Gnome via Synaptic if you so desire. Being Debian based means installing packages is a no brainer, even easier than Windows. It als means you have your pick from one of the most complete repositories on the planet for software. Ever since I got my PC fixed I haven't been able to crash it (even with a meteor). About the only bad thing I can think of with this distro is that it didn't support my dialup modem immediately after install. I still have research to do on that end. Well there's that issue and the issue where I have to manually mount my Sony USB Microvault. The manual mount is worked around by editing your /etc/fstab file. Other than that I believe this is THE distro for Linux users of all sorts, beginner to advanced.

This distro is awesome. I installed it on my newer AMD 64 pc adn everything ran great, I then tried it on an old P3 500mhz but with the 2.4 kernel and it still was just as good. I had no problems what so ever except for a few extension errors which I easily fixed. This distro is great for newbies and average users. Im just waiting to go home and update my apps now.

What everyone says about MEPIS is true: it installs very quickly and easily. Really smooth. However, it would not connect to my wireless network (equipment is a Linksys WUSB54G), so I couldn't keep it. Also, the GUI tries too hard to be cute and cuddly or "warm and fuzzy": there is a little aquarium on the taskbar, and a cartoon dragon (the KDE mascot) in the logout window. Macintosh users will probably like this, but I'd rather have my desktop and my menus be stark and generic than try to say "the computer is your friend."